Tofuture Tofu Press Review: No More Soggy Tofu!

When the postman knocked on the door and handed me the Tofuture Tofu Press, I hadn’t been so excited about a few pieces of plastic since getting my first Spirograph in the early 80s. As you’ve probably guessed, you don’t draw pretty pictures with the Tofuture Tofu Press though; you press tofu with it.

As anyone knows, tofu needs pressing. It needs pressing to make it edible; unpressed tofu is a gungy, spongy, soggy block of slime and I wish I’d learnt about pressing it earlier than I did. Now I have learnt to press tofu, I eat it regularly (you can check out my tofu recipes here) but the one thing I was missing was something practical and convenient to press it with. My method was to wrap the tofu in reams of kitchen roll and then press it between two saucers – either quickly with my hands or for longer with heavy objects balanced on top. Although both methods work to an extent, they have their failings – I had visions of the saucers snapping and slicing my hands with the hand method and the last time I used the heavy objects method, I balanced a cast iron frying pan on the top saucer, then balanced my Nutribullet on top of the frying pan. I was happily playing on my computer upstairs when I heard a crash in the kitchen. On investigation, I found the frying pan had slipped off the saucer and bashed into the wall, breaking a kitchen wall tile. A brand new kitchen wall tile in the BRAND NEW KITCHEN THE MEAT EATER HAD ONLY JUST PUT TOGETHER WITH HIS OWN FAIR HANDS. Oh man, was I in trouble. Luckily, the Meat Eater had had a tax rebate or something and was in a good mood and when I confessed what I’d done (I couldn’t really not confess – there was a big hole in the kitchen wall where a tile should have been) he just shrugged.

Phew.

Unsurprisingly, ever since then, I’ve been nervous about using the ‘stack a load of heavy shit on it’ tofu-pressing method, so when Tofuture offered to send me one of their tofu presses, I got mega-excited. As in HALLELUJAH PRAISE THE TOFU-PRESSING LORD excited.

The Tofuture Tofu Press is small, compact and no bigger than it needs to be. It comes in three pieces, which all stack neatly inside each other.

I had a block of tofu (just the normal block of Cauldron you can find in all supermarkets) in the fridge, waiting to be pressed and because I’m a geek and wanted a before and after comparison, I measured it first. Please excuse the dirty ruler (and in case you’re wondering what para it’s ruling out, it’s parasites [the ruler was a freebie from the vet]. I have nothing against paramedics or paralegals).

The tofu fits perfectly inside the inner tub.

The inner tub is placed inside the main tub (which will catch the water), then the top is placed over the inner tub and you pull down the elastic bands over the hooks, then pull the clasps back, which will cause the top to press down on the tofu, squeezing the water out.

The elastic bands are quite difficult to get over the hooks but if the bands were slack, then there’d be no pressure on the tofu and no water would get squeezed out and then it wouldn’t be a tofu press; it’d just be a tofu container.

As mentioned above, the tofu press is compact and when your tofu is sitting safely inside it, it fits beautifully in your fridge, nestled in amongst whatever it is you keep in your fridge (mine had a respectable amount of vegetables in it when I took this photo; sometimes it only contains beer and chocolate, but I didn’t borrow these vegetables just for the photo, honest. Although, that’s an embarrassing amount of plastic *makes mental note to reinstate Riverford veg box and stop buying plastic-wrapped veg from Tesco*).

Although I’d planned to leave the tofu pressing for a few hours, after an hour, I couldn’t resist a peek. I took the tofu press out of the fridge and could feel the water sploshing around in the bottom and when I poured it out, there was 100ml of water.

After five hours had passed, I took the tofu out of the fridge and poured out the water that had collected since I’d emptied it and there was another 25ml.

And as you can see, the tofu had shrunk by about half (in case you can’t be bothered to scroll back up, it was 4cm high before being pressed).

And guess what I made with my newly pressed tofu (after marinading it in the press – another use for it)? I’ll give you a clue – it was on a Friday. Yep, tofush! I’m not lying when I say this is the best tofush I’ve made so far – whether that’s down to the Tofuture Tofu Press or my immense tofu-battering skillz or a combination of both, I don’t know. All I know is that I’m very happy with the press and will be using it to press all my tofu in the future. No more broken kitchen wall tiles, yay.

How to get your hands on a Tofuture Tofu Press

Okay, so now you want one of these tofu presses, don’t you? You’ve got a few options: you can either:

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26 comments

Hahahahaha…that is the best review of a kitchen utensil that I have read in ages! Well done for that very informative and highly entertaining review. I am now going to look for one of these on Amazon and I may have to get two – one for my daughter at Uni – cheers. Kathie 🙂

I have never tried cooking with tofu but at least I know what I need now when/if I do! This is a great review Cathy, so thorough! Glad its making your kitchen life easier, some gadgets are so useless so its nice to see ones which actually work and get used.

It comes out beautifully, nothing at all like mush! I pressed it for about 5 hours and although it wasn’t completely dry, it was dry enough. You could leave it overnight to press even more water out of it.

Great little device if you are a BIG tofu fan as it looks like a handy gadget. I didn’t understand do you need to press shop bought tofu as I just use it straight from the pack once I have patted it with some kitchen paper????

The shop bought ones are still waterlogged (well, the Cauldron one is anyway – I’m not sure I’ve tried any others) and I find they still need pressing to get the water out. As you can see, I squeezed out 125ml of water using this press!

OMG this is exactly what I need. I love Pad Thai with tofu as well as other tofu dishes, but struggle to get firm dry tofu that will hold its shape when fried. I usually try pressing using a tray and various heavy objects, but it’s not ideal. I’ve also tried squeezing tofu in a cheese cloth – don’t try unless you want lots of mess and a cheesecloth so thoroughly impregnated with tofu that it has to be thrown away.

Hi, is the tofuture press still available in the UK? Amazon says they don’t have any available and don’t know when it will be again and when I googled tofuture the web pages seem to have disappeared. Please advise

I found this tofu press when I was in desperation about my paneer. I use paneer a LOT when I can get it – but most often I couldn’t. However I had never had any success making my own because, like you people with tofu, it was a touch-and-go and rather precarious/dangerous experience at best trying to press it. Then I discovered the Tofuture press…

Amazing. I now make paneer virtually every week and it’s a success every time. Paneer is highly versatile for those of us who eat dairy (but only from properly-reared, organically fed and treated cows in small herds), and it can be used in everything from curries and stir-fries to barbecued skewers and beany dishes such as chilli beans. Who wouldn’t want to be without it? And of course, as ever, there’s no beating homemade.

A brilliant piece of kit; the price is fairly alarming but, having said that, after using mine for six months, I’m about to buy another…!